>>> find /usr/src/sys -name '*.c' -exec grep '^limfree' '{}' /dev/null \;
> find /usr/src/sys -name "*.c" | xargs grep '^limfree' /dev/null
> the find ... | xargs ... is:
> (1) probably not that much more inefficient,
> (2) is portable to any POSIX system,
> (3) is more flexible (both because of find's flexibility, and
> because you can do a lot with a pipeline).
(4) broken if any of the located filenames contains characters that
(like newlines) upset xargs. (My find contains a -print0 option, which
separates output filenames with NULs rather than newlines, specifically
designed to avoid this problem; my xargs doesn't currently have a
corresponding option, but will by the time anyone gets this.)
While newlines are relatively unlikely, standard xargs also gets upset
on a whole lot of other characters, like whitespace(!). Fortunately
they won't be found either searching the stock /sys tree. (I'd also
use something faster than grep, at least for the bulk searching.)
der Mouse
mouse@collatz.mcrcim.mcgill.edu